I love my xs max (256g)! also got my dad an xr

just an fyi. your experience will not be complete without the apple watch 4 and AirPods.

a big phone is nice and all but the little things matter too.

AirPods. Check. Have had for a while.

Watch 4.......damnit! Still rocking my Series 0 from 4 years ago.

Holding onto my trusty 6S for as long as I can. Refuse to give in and pay the new iPhone prices. I'll probably pick up a used 7 off Craigslist in the next year or so if my 6S slows down from the Apple updates (updates that conveniently slow down the older models).

Well aware that I represent the minority in the Apple world.

6S is a good phone! I just bought iPhone SE for my son. It has same camera and chip as your 6s. Should be great for next several years.

BTW, iOS 12 is very good for older phones.

I have an XS and miss the size of my SE. But can't beat the camera functions of the XS so that's the trade off, I suppose.

I went from a 6s to an XS. It's a better in almost every way except for one, size. I miss the size of the 6s. I feel like that size with the screen coverage of the XS would be an ideal phone. Heck, even the SE with that coverage would be pretty sweet too. I hope they know that there are a lot of people out there that don't want giant phones in their hands/pockets and bring back a smaller option. Or maybe when foldable screens become available.

Awesome! Yeah, it's been incredibly reliable for me. The SE is a solid phone and I actually prefer that over my 6S. Love it because it shares the same slim profile design as the older 5, but with newer guts. Genius. Wish Apple would have continued to offer a compact version like that.


Yeah man, Apple really had something going with the SE. Compact design, fast, and made from aluminum. Not some fancy glass back case. I really want to say if Jobs were still here, he would have not allowed the iPhone to become so expensive and fragile.

Remember, Jobs did create iPhone 4S, which was glass both sides with steel band....same as XS.

And iPhone XS does have some amazing tech in it...XS literally has the best processor of any mobile phone by a wide margin (and is truly desktop quality), it’s camera (pics and video) are top notch, materials are top notch (316L stainless steel and sapphire lens), display is #1 (even better than Samsung’s), and lastly but equally important is RESALE value.

So, while you do pay more upfront, iPhones hold their value very well, gets supported for at least 5+ years, and Apple does not sell your data. You can literally hand down your phone to your kids because of how long it is supported!

Most Android phones get max 18 months support, but actual software support may even be less....Pixel is ground breaking (for Android) because Google will support it for merely 3 years!

Yeah, you do pay $100-200 more for XS than a flagship Samsung or Pixel, but over the long haul, it is actually a much better value.

One of the reasons I pulled the trigger. Being able to trade my 6S in and get $200 for it was nice. Figure if this one is worth at minimum that in 3 years, then I'm more ok with the initial cost.

I know I ain't clickin' that sh*t.

Thai,
Reading this thread makes me think you should have gone into sales instead of medicine .... or maybe you are in medical sales?

Anyways,
For anyone still following this thread FYI unless something has changed recently the iPhone XS or any of them for that matter do not do multi image stacking with these features: noise removal, image alignment. Yes the iPhone does HDR but that is only 3 images (vs 8) and and only correcting for exposure, similar to a bracketing merge in Photoshop.

What the Pixel 3 does is true image stacking, 8 pictures for every user click of the take photo button, similar to how they do image stacking in astronomy with 8 pictures overlapped to eliminate jitter and increase sharpness PLUS to eliminate low light noise in the picture. The Pixel 3 does all of this with a simple but very fast quality F1.8 lens and a dedicated HW chip for image computations.
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Here is my experience with the Pixel 3 at night. Now don't take my comments to be bashing Apple. I think they will catch up. Google is notorious for not keeping their consumer tech under lock and key. They openly published the API for any individual or manufacturer to look at. I'm sure apple Will do this very soon. Hopefully DSLRs join in as well.

Hmmm, i thought that i responded to your misunderstanding a while back...but I will try again.

More info on Xs camera: Inside Apple’s iPhone XS Camera Technology – Member Feature Stories – Medium

"As Marineau-Mes explained to me, the camera starts by capturing two image frames at different exposures in one-thirtieth of a second. That information is passed on to the software pipe and the A12’s neural engine, which starts analyzing the images.

Smart HDR doesn’t stop there. “Raw material is captured at 30 fps (that’s a pair every thirtieth of a second), and the fusing happens in a few hundred milliseconds,” Marineau-Mes pointed out.

Inside the A12 chip is the neural engine that analyzes frames not just for exposure but for discrete image elements. It’s identifying facial features and looking for motion. If the system detects motion, it looks for the frame with the sharpest image of the motion and adds it to the image. Similarly, an image with red-eye is not just fixed but replaced with a frame where the eye isn’t red or with the reference eye color from the frame without red-eye.

It takes an incredibly powerful ISP and neural engine backed by an equally powerful GPU and CPU to do all this processing, Marineau-Mes said.

All that heavy lifting starts before you even press the iPhone camera app’s virtual shutter button. Schiller said that what users see on their iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR screens is not dramatically different from the final image.

“You need for that to happen,” said Schiller. “It needs to feel real-time for the user.”

All of these image capture gymnastics extend to video as well, where the same frame-to-frame analysis is happening in real-time to produce video with more details in high and low light.

Video or stills, the end result is a new high-water mark for Apple and, perhaps, smartphone camera photography in general."

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@BrianSD_42 , as you can read above, the Smart HDR of iPhone XS is far more complex than what you wrote......and is doing a lot more than just image stacking of Pixel 2/3. Smart HDR is far more advance than what Google is doing with Pixel 3. Smart HDR is actually basically taking pictures of the scene at 30 frames per second ALL THE TIME (continuously) and doing heavy duty processing/analyzing on it in REAL TIME.......even before the user press the shutter button! This is all courtesy of Apple A12 chip.

And this is why Smart HDR won't be matched anytime in 2019. No mobile processor (even latest Qualcomm S855) is able to do the heavy duty processing of A12 in real time. Controlling highlights and lifting shadow details......NO ONE CAN COME CLOSE TO SMART HDR in this regard.

And unlike Pixel 3, even if you press your shutter button quickly on iPhone XS to take multiple (smart HDR) pictures, ALL the photos will be saved because the computation of Smart HDR is done in REAL TIME.

With Pixel 3, some of your photos are lost...literally lost! The Pixel 3 processing is so damn slow that if you take pictures in succession, it won't save to your phone!! So much for Pixel hardware! (For more about your “dedicated computational” PVC, please read NEXT post.)

Catch up? Dude, XS camera system has surpassed Pixel 3. It is as if you just ignore all the facts and came to your own conclusion! LOL

In fact, Pixel 3 photos are VERY noisy compared to other flagships. They are also very heavy in contrast...everything is gloomy and dreary thru Pixel lens.

Pixel has F1.8....wow, amazing...oh wait. iPhone XS has also F1.8 lens. BTW, F1.8 lens on smartphone is rather ordinary these days! Many flagships are now F1.5 to F1.7. But at least, iPhone XS F1.8 lens is protected by sapphire glass.

You talk about Pixel Visual Core (PVC)......this amazing "dedicated hardware chip" in Pixel phones. Magical even you say.

Except, it isn't!! LINK: In Questions: Google Pixel Camera Q&A with Brian Rakowski & Tim Knight

You see unlike iPhone, on Android, 3rd party camera apps (Snapchat, etc.) somehow do not have direct access to the camera HDR processing. So, 3rd party apps' photos look crappy. With PVC, it allows for 3rd party apps to get similar HDR processing photos.

In other words, PVC does NOTHING to your photos if you use stock camera app. NOTHING. NADA. ZERO.

While you're boasting Pixel 3 Brian, tell us more about your 60 FPS video mode! Now, folks, this is about as dumb as you can get! Google, in all its wisdom, decides that owners like Brian is NOT smart enough to know the difference between 30 and 60 FPS. So, while filming, Pixel 3 will change AUTOMATICALLY between 30 and 60 FPS within the SAME video! So, when viewing your video, various parts of that video will have different frames per second! And what it does record is just very plain video with piss-poor audio and poor dynamic range because again, it does NOT have the computational power to adjust in REAL TIME the highlights and shadows down to the pixel level like the iPhone XS.

IPhone XS has the BEST camera system in mobile at this time, bar none. And will likely carry this crown until iPhone 11 comes out.

And after a mere 4 months of Pixel ownership, you get this: The Pixel 3 is Pissing Me Off. – Droid Life

(BTW, the editor who wrote that article is a pure Pixel fanboy to the extreme.)

Hilarious quotes from that article:

"The performance of it is dog sh*t. The camera is slow to load, if it even loads at all. Reboots are required daily or you’ll open apps and watch them slowly load or freeze for lengthy periods of time. Battery life, which could be sh*tty because of the attachment at all times to a Wear OS watch, is bad."

"When I mentioned to Tim that my Pixel 3 is garbage right now, he too said that his Pixel 3 XL is behaving badly. And he listed out all of the problems I’m having, like a need for daily reboots, slow-loading camera and apps, etc. Well, his battery life is fine. Additionally, a reader dropped us a random email over the weekend with the same complaints, that his Pixel 3 XL had “gone to complete sh*t lately, dropping frames and freezing.”"

"Redditors are well aware of the slow camera problem too."

"Lag and stuttering and slow-loading apps are noticeable things. When you miss shots on your camera because it takes 5-10 seconds to load and then doesn’t seem to register every other shutter button press, you don’t need data – something is just wrong."

---------------------------------------------------------------

And if you read the comments, then you will see that A LOT of the owners have the same problems!

Why does Pixel 3 cost so much again??? Good (but not great) camera system...video capability is a total joke! Ordinary display quality. Ordinary (sub-standard almost) design. Ordinary processor. Bad resale value.

On the other hand, my XS is just flying thru things. A12 chip = 60 FPS in gaming...heck A12 chip is so far ahead that it even beats Qualcomm S855 in pretty much everything! Smart HDR is still blindingly fast. No lost photos. In fact, with every software update, Smart HDR is just getting better and better.